What Will Digital Marketing Look Like 10 Years From Now?

• By Enrik Karlsson
• 29-07-2025
• Digital Marketing

A big part of marketing is staying ahead of the game, being the first to react to cultural trends in order to beat competitors to the punch in terms of innovation, messaging and product offering. But obviously, this is easier said than done, and nobody truly knows how the marketing landscape will evolve. If you could see into the future though, you’d have a pretty big edge over competitors.

While we can’t predict the future without any doubt, we can look into current trends to make assumptions about how business will change in the future. In this article, we’re looking into our marketing-shaped crystal ball to see how the area may look ten years from now.

How Has Marketing Changed In The Last Ten Years?

To understand how marketing will change in the next ten years, we can look at the previous ten years to see what direction the world is heading. Firstly, it is clear to see that we are becoming a more digital society. Smartphones are the best example of this; the rate at which they have developed has seen us become a mobile-first society, at least in terms of browsing. This has massively impacted marketing channels, with brands moving away from desktop.

While social media was born more than ten years ago, it has continued to evolve. One thing that’s interesting is that new social media platforms have emerged to suit changes in consumer behaviour. A preference for short-form video gave rise to TikTok, for example. However, as society and culture change in the near future, marketers must be prepared to get to grips with the new social platforms that follow.

We’ve long been influenced by individuals we look up to. Today, this has become known as influencer marketing. But in the last ten years, brands have had to start respecting the fact that customers are aware of influencer marketing. As a result, the approach has changed with the space seeing more authentic partnerships and a decreasing obsession with vanity metrics.

How Digital Marketing Will Change In The Next Ten Years

Generative AI

There’s no doubt about the current business buzzword: AI. But while artificial intelligence is sweeping through almost every industry, it’s not quite at a point where it is fully replacing marketing teams and agencies. Ten years from now, there’s a strong chance that AI platforms still won’t be seen as an alternative to human teams. However, it’s also fair to assume that the AI world will have evolved significantly.

Content Quality

The first evolution will likely be the quality of content that AI is capable of producing. In most cases, it’s easy to spot when content has been generated by AI, but the gap between AI and human-generated content is closing by the day. In ten years, it’s fair to say that this gap will have well and truly closed, probably to the point where it’s unclear whether content has been created by a human or a machine.

Laws and Regulations

But the ways in which businesses use this power will be interesting. Many people have been quick to raise ethical concerns around the undisclosed use of AI to create deepfakes, content that has been manipulated using AI but passed off as real content. As a result, businesses can expect to navigate new laws and regulations around AI and face penalties for using AI in unethical ways.

Hyper Personalisation

One way in which AI will be used is to hyper-personalise marketing material. We know that customers and users want marketing efforts to feel personal, but given the time it takes to create content, it’s unrealistic to create content for every single member of your audience. AI could change this though, given that little to no human involvement is required. Going forward, brands could find the intersection between AI, data and content to provide tailored content to users depending on where they are in their consumer journey.

AR and VR

The channels through which we consume content will always evolve. A quick look at the past and we can see that marketing has come in the form of print, radio, TV and online, evolving in line with technology. To predict marketing channels of the future, we can look to the world of technology, as marketing isn’t usually far behind. Currently, augmented reality and virtual reality are beginning to grow in popularity, and it’s time for brands to consider how they can tailor their marketing strategy accordingly.

Devices

The biggest consideration for marketers when it comes to technology is the new devices that emerge as a result. Virtual reality headsets are being produced by some of the world’s leading tech brands, including Meta, Apple and Sony.

While currently these types of devices are being used for novelty purposes such as gaming, it won’t be long before more practical use cases emerge with users using headsets to browse the internet and make purchases.

Metaverse

One of the big expectations from virtual reality is the arrival of the metaverse—worlds in which the lines between real and virtual life are blurred. For the optimal metaverse experience, most people believe that virtual reality headsets will be the device of choice for users to play, live and socialise in the metaverse.

With socialisation comes business opportunity, and it’s imperative that businesses are ready to capitalise on metaverse-based advertising opportunities. This will differ from business to business, but any brand which is selling a physical product will have the opportunity to sell a digital version of their product in the metaverse.

Gaming

As already mentioned, we can expect gaming to move into the metaverse in the next ten years, which opens up a host of opportunities for tech brands, but how can everyone else get involved? The gaming industry is expected to become a $667bn industry by 2030, which is quite frankly impossible to avoid for brands, even those from outside the gaming world. Going forward, the task for brands and marketers will be to grab a slice of the gaming pie.

New Advertising Real Estate

With the top gaming titles drawing in hundreds of millions of sales, having your brand visible in-game is quite clearly a lucrative opportunity. And this is possibly the most obvious way in which brands can harness the growing popularity of gaming. While it’s important that brands are targeting games that share a similar audience to themselves, there’ll be no shortage of audience, with the gaming industry expected to continue to grow.

Gaming Influencers

In today’s digital world, with every industry comes influencers, and this is exactly the same when it comes to gaming. Another marketing-shaped avenue into the gaming world will come in the form of partnerships with high-profile individuals, and this is something we’re already starting to see more of. Again, it’s critical that brands and influencers share similar audiences to ensure campaigns hit the mark.

Decentralisation

The shift towards a decentralised world, often referred to as Web3, isn’t quite mainstream, but it is well underway. This shift has been driven by the development of blockchain technology, but also covers assets such as crypto and NFTs. But at the heart of this shift is a desire to move away from central intermediaries holding power over users, and brands must also factor this into their marketing strategies.

Creator-owned Platforms

Web3 is often referred to as the read-write-own era, and is built on the belief that creators should truly own the content which they create. This would be a stark contrast from platforms of today that see creators lose control of their content the moment they upload it. Think about how platforms like Instagram can remove your content at any moment. Brands will need to not only consider new platforms that emerge from this wave, but also factor in how they can give their community more control in their relationship with the brand.

Tokenisation

One of the most exciting innovations within Web3 is the idea of tokenising real-world assets. This involves breaking down physical assets such as real estate and collectibles into smaller parts, which are then represented as digital tokens on the blockchain. This new technology could provide a completely new way to do business for some brands, and will require a whole new marketing approach.

Ethical Marketing

There’s no doubt that the world is becoming more ethical, and marketers must appreciate that this will have implications for their industry. Research suggests that consumers, particularly younger ones, are more likely to factor in how ethical a business is into their purchasing decisions.

Sustainability

The move towards a more sustainable world is seeing a demand for more eco-friendly products. But consumers are becoming wise to the fact that this is often a marketing gimmick from big brands. Going forward, brands won’t be able to ‘fake’ being sustainable, and marketing messaging must be closely aligned with the actual business strategy.

Data Privacy

Marketers love data, but unfortunately for them, consumers are becoming increasingly wary of handing over data. As time goes on, users are being given more and more control over data privacy. This means, in the years to come, marketing teams may need to create strategies without detailed information about who they’re selling to.

B-Corp Agencies

B-corp organisations are those which demonstrate the “highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability”. With ethics becoming increasingly important, brands may be drawn to work with a content marketing agency that is B-Corp certified.

Final Thoughts

Nobody knows what the digital marketing landscape will look like ten years from now. But it is clear that the world is heading towards one that is more ethical, more transparent, and more decentralised. While new technology will undoubtedly emerge, it’s imperative that brands and marketing teams get to grips with the current technologies that will drive this shift. As mentioned above, this includes blockchain technology, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Along with just understanding these new forms of technology, marketers must understand how they fit into the business world and, more importantly, how they can be used to bring in more business.

A big part of this will be understanding younger audiences and how they intend to use new technology. Again, this may shift over time. Time will tell, but we can expect younger audiences to be concerned with their digital appearance in the metaverse, which should open up a whole new world of opportunities for brands that are able to digitalise their products. Expect clothes, jewellery and cars to be big business in virtual worlds of the future.

It’s also worth noting that marketing teams may need to be more transparent and honest than they are today. As Gen Z's spending power grows, they are likely to favour brands that are ethical and ones that respect their privacy.